Surviving The Evacuation (Book 1): London by Frank Tayell Page B
Authors: Frank Tayell
Tags: Zombies
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it made the idea of survival and life afterwards real too. That kind of hope was as important in maintaining order as a whole regiment on the streets.
To ensure that none of those workers tried to abandon their posts we evacuated their families during the first few days. You can call them hostages if you like, but what else were we going to do? Money wasn't worth anything, food was scarce, the only valuable commodity we had to offer was safety. The conditions this first wave were confronted with in the enclaves were squalid and cramped, nothing at all like the propaganda footage that was being broadcast, but it was safe.
Perhaps it would have been easier if we'd been able to evacuate the cities immediately. A rolling exodus using the trains, spread out over a week or even longer. But we couldn't. When the evacuation was announced so to was the existence of the vaccine and that it would be administered only at the muster points. We had the delivery mechanism, 100 million single dose injection pens stockpiled against the pandemic we'd been waiting decades for, but of the vaccine itself, we had nowhere near enough.
During the latter days of the cold war, after Britain abandoned its biological weapons programs it kept up its research into a so called super-vaccine, a drug that would work against any biological agent the USSR could throw at us. It had little early success. When the iron curtain came down the project was only saved from the axe by virtue of being a major employer in a marginal constituency. Over the past decades, under new management and with the country facing new threats, the project was revitalised until, finally, about eight years ago success was reported in agent RL-291 (9XT).
It wasn't completely effective, far from it, in the early trials 30% of the animals died, 40% contracted all seven of the test viruses, 25% contracted at least one, but consistently in trial after trial 5% remained free of infection. It was that five percent that made the agent effective enough to be seen as the first step on a long road of research and development that would ultimately see all the world's worst diseases consigned to the history books. Naturally it would be the British government who'd take the credit.
It was about six years ago that I first came across it. I was looking for a cause for Jen to trumpet after her popularity had been tarnished after a misguided head-to-head with the Mayor on BBC London. I had, following a tip off from Sholto, been investigating a black hole in a particular hospital's budget. I assumed it was just another scam, we'd had so many, so I started asking questions. That quickly landed me in an underground room at the MOD being interrogated by some very unpleasant men. I promised to ask no more questions and they promised that if I did... They didn't finish the sentence. In that place, under those circumstances, they didn't have to.
The day after I got out of hospital I asked Jen about the vaccine and whether it would be worth trying it on this infection. Her response wasn't at all what I was expecting. She seemed shocked that I knew about it. I thought they'd have told her about my time in the dungeons of Whitehall. Ah, secrets, what would politics be without them?
She said that yes it had been tested on humans the day before, and it did work. At least it worked some of the time, but more time was needed to manufacture enough for the entire population.
I don't know how much I should say, even now. I suppose if this is being read by someone other than myself then National Secrets no longer matter. From the time I stopped my digging RL-291 had been refined, redesigned and improved. When its existence was announced we said it was 99.9% effective, but that was an exaggeration. According to Jen, the vaccine that was to be used at the muster points would, at best, stop transmission of the virus in 80% of cases. It was a small lie, I suppose, but a necessary one.
By saying that it would
To ensure that none of those workers tried to abandon their posts we evacuated their families during the first few days. You can call them hostages if you like, but what else were we going to do? Money wasn't worth anything, food was scarce, the only valuable commodity we had to offer was safety. The conditions this first wave were confronted with in the enclaves were squalid and cramped, nothing at all like the propaganda footage that was being broadcast, but it was safe.
Perhaps it would have been easier if we'd been able to evacuate the cities immediately. A rolling exodus using the trains, spread out over a week or even longer. But we couldn't. When the evacuation was announced so to was the existence of the vaccine and that it would be administered only at the muster points. We had the delivery mechanism, 100 million single dose injection pens stockpiled against the pandemic we'd been waiting decades for, but of the vaccine itself, we had nowhere near enough.
During the latter days of the cold war, after Britain abandoned its biological weapons programs it kept up its research into a so called super-vaccine, a drug that would work against any biological agent the USSR could throw at us. It had little early success. When the iron curtain came down the project was only saved from the axe by virtue of being a major employer in a marginal constituency. Over the past decades, under new management and with the country facing new threats, the project was revitalised until, finally, about eight years ago success was reported in agent RL-291 (9XT).
It wasn't completely effective, far from it, in the early trials 30% of the animals died, 40% contracted all seven of the test viruses, 25% contracted at least one, but consistently in trial after trial 5% remained free of infection. It was that five percent that made the agent effective enough to be seen as the first step on a long road of research and development that would ultimately see all the world's worst diseases consigned to the history books. Naturally it would be the British government who'd take the credit.
It was about six years ago that I first came across it. I was looking for a cause for Jen to trumpet after her popularity had been tarnished after a misguided head-to-head with the Mayor on BBC London. I had, following a tip off from Sholto, been investigating a black hole in a particular hospital's budget. I assumed it was just another scam, we'd had so many, so I started asking questions. That quickly landed me in an underground room at the MOD being interrogated by some very unpleasant men. I promised to ask no more questions and they promised that if I did... They didn't finish the sentence. In that place, under those circumstances, they didn't have to.
The day after I got out of hospital I asked Jen about the vaccine and whether it would be worth trying it on this infection. Her response wasn't at all what I was expecting. She seemed shocked that I knew about it. I thought they'd have told her about my time in the dungeons of Whitehall. Ah, secrets, what would politics be without them?
She said that yes it had been tested on humans the day before, and it did work. At least it worked some of the time, but more time was needed to manufacture enough for the entire population.
I don't know how much I should say, even now. I suppose if this is being read by someone other than myself then National Secrets no longer matter. From the time I stopped my digging RL-291 had been refined, redesigned and improved. When its existence was announced we said it was 99.9% effective, but that was an exaggeration. According to Jen, the vaccine that was to be used at the muster points would, at best, stop transmission of the virus in 80% of cases. It was a small lie, I suppose, but a necessary one.
By saying that it would
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